Moving vans taking people out of state in droves, survey finds

United Van Lines had a busy year moving people out of New Jersey in 2013.

The company tracks yearly migration, recording the number of moves into and out of a state. For the third year in the past four, New Jersey led the list as the state with the greatest percentage of people leaving.

According to United, 4,045 of its New Jersey customers moved out of state last year, while 2,326 moved in, resulting in a 63.5 to 36.5 ratio. Both numbers were larger than in 2012, when 3,925 families used United to move out, as opposed to 2,375 that moved in.

The study is based on household moves handled by United.

Allied Van Lines released a similar report last week that put New Jersey in its top five outbound states.

The U.S. Census paints an equally grim picture, Migration data for 2011, the last year available, showed 216,000 people left the Garden State, while about 146,000 moved in. (An earlier version of the story misread the data as 95,591 people left the Garden State that year, while nearly 110,000 moved here from somewhere else). According to that year’s information, the vast majority moved to New York (41,450), Pennsylvania (36,133) and Florida (25,206).

United Van Lines’ tracking showed the Northeast is the most prominent region on the high-outbound traffic list. In addition to New Jersey, New York (61 percent), Connecticut (59 percent) and Massachusetts (56 percent) are also included.

Where are people moving, according to United? Oregon (61 percent inbound), South Carolina (60 percent) and North Carolina (58 percent).